It has been looking pretty bleak at shortstop for the Chicago White Sox lately.
Jacob Amaya is all glove and no bat. The intended future at the position, Colson Montgomery, was just pulled from Triple-A action and sent back to the team's spring training facility in Arizona to work out his swing issues. The club has been so desperate for production at the plate from the shortstop position that the team even used Bobby Dalbec there.
Entering Thursday, White Sox shortstops had posted an MLB-worst OPS of .306 this season.
Injury issues in the outfield have prevented Brooks Baldwin from consistently playing his natural infield position. While Baldwin is an ideal player to play short in the interim, the team needs his defensive versatility more.
Thankfully, Chase Meidroth has returned from the 10-day injured list.
Prior to the series finale against the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday afternoon, the White Sox activated exciting rookie Chase Meidorth from the 10-day injured list. Meidroth was immediately inserted into the leadoff spot in the lineup by manager Will Venable while playing shortstop.
Right now, Lenyn Sosa is producing enough at the plate that the club does not want to take his bat out of the lineup. Sosa is a middle infielder that is more natural at second base. Theoretically, Sosa could also play first, but for some strange reason the club wants to give love to the struggling Andrew Vaughn rather than demote him like the Detroit Tigers did with Spencer Torkelson last season.
That means the best way to get Meidroth, Baldwin, and Sosa all in the lineup is to put Meidroth at SS, Sosa at 2B, and Baldwin in left or right field.
Gage Workman going on the IL also means Vaughn will likely play more first base, when it looked like he might DH more with yesterday's lineup being a possible preview of moving Miguel Vargas to first more often while Workman got a look at third.
Hopefully Meidroth's return also means that the Joshua Palacios experiment as the leadoff hitter is coming to an end. Meidroth provides tremendous ability to get on base at the top of the order, something Palcios has not been doing consistently enough.
Meidroth enters May with a .269 average, a .387 on-base percentage, and a walk percentage of 16.1 during his first nine career games. That is solid production given he was playing the entire time with a thumb injury that made gripping the bat painful. It got to the point where it made sense to give him a 10-day rest rather than try to push it.
The timing of his return could not have come at a better time, as it has been tough to watch Amaya be an automatic out in the lineup with a .078/.107/.098 slash line. The hope was that Montgomery would be producing well enough by now to get called up and take over the shortstop job every day.
Instead, he has struggled so badly that the organization does not think he should be playing in actual games. He basically has to go back to swing school to see if he can still be a viable big-league player.
Meidroth has already given the White Sox reason to believe that he will be a solid, everyday player. The Sox need as many of those as they can get.